Here’s a spot of good news for the world’s unluckiest indie developer, The Indie Stone: It’s looking as though Project Zomboid – their really very good zombie survival game – may be coming to Steam. Using the same technology that brought the news that TF2 was going free, keen eyes on our forum have spotted the Magical Box Thing that says what’s being added soon listing Project Zomboid as a retail product. Which is fabbo, because it deserves to be played, and those poor bastards deserve some luck. So just give your best guesses as to how this will go spectacularly wrong. (Cheers to Will and SilverSilence.)

It’s funny, little things like that in a game affect me more deeply than nearly any hours-long character-driven plot. I almost can’t play PZ because of the injured wife motivation, combined with the promise of inevitable doom.

I’m fine with the injured wife motivation, but embedding such a fucking horrible, heinous action in there without any warning put me right off the game. I had to restart, obviously, because I hadn’t been intending to do the deed in question, and it subsequently led me to suspect a similar trolling effort every time I clicked any object in the game. Pick up can of beans. Player beats self to death with can of beans. Etc.

On the other hand, if used properly, a bit of a surprise like that could be a really great storytelling device, revealing something shocking about a player character. I’m just not convinced that’s what happened in this specific instance. Either way, this is exciting news, and lord knows this studio deserves some good fortune. I’m a layman in terms of security but I assume distributing the game via Steam will be more secure than any effort they’ve made alone so far, so hopefully the added security and publicity of being on Steam will be a much-needed shot in the arm.

I believe the reason the option was there was not for “heinous” purposes, but rather for liberating release. If the zombies were to get into the house and there were no options left for our valiant hero, well do you not think killing his wife would be the right thing to do, given the situation?

It’s not “trolling”, it’s brilliant open story telling. We should expect the same from all games.

This game has my nomination for one of the best openings ever. And by opening, I mean literally just the title cards at the start. After just playing the first 30 seconds of this game and hearing the sparse music coupled with just white on black text: “These are the end times. There was no hope of survival. This is how you died.”–I was convinced that this is something I wanted to play as any developers who have the taste to pull off something that minimalist yet effective immediately have my trust. It really sets up the desperate tone perfectly, and once they introduce your wife, it just gets more and more effective.

You’ve obviously completely missed my point. I don’t have a problem with having the option, I just think it should be made clearer that that’s what you’re going to do. As has been said here and elsewhere, using a pillow on a woman in a bed doesn’t immediately say “euthanasia” to all people. It’s the kind of thing that should definitely carry a warning prompt of some kind, giving you a chance to back out of it. Or a bit of mouseover text when equipped with the pillow saying “Smother”. That’s all I meant. Making it so a seemingly innocuous action makes you kill your wife really is just trolling. But it got us talking about it, which is obviously what they wanted.

As for “we should expect this from all games”, I really don’t want every character to turn to euthanasia at the first sign of trouble. It’s mucky.

@Bilbo; well, it _is_ still in the alpha stages, not even beta yet. You can’t expect everything you do here to be polished. Did you give them your feedback on this? That is after all what you’re doing, testing an unfinished product.

I bought it a while back, haven’t played it yet. Waiting for more features to be implemented before I boot it up.

Oddly enough, I find the overall production very polished for such an early build. This isn’t a case of polish, it’s just an odd judgement. Enough people are already talking about it being a strange idea that I don’t see much point in going on the Indie Stone forums to bring it up – it’s old news – but it was mentioned here

lemmy101 (developer) – “I should clarify on this since it’s now out there. It’s not quite as exciting as ‘being on Steam’, at least not yet, but Valve have done us a massive favour in allowing Project Zomboid to use their servers and auto-updating and whatnot. We won’t appear on the store and Steam accounts will only be via redeem codes, so purchases will still be through our site. It’s possible we’ll pop up on the Store at some point in the future when the game has more content and is more complete, but none of that is for sure at the moment.”

It will definitely be hosted on Steam pre-release. My understanding is that your purchase from the developer will grant you access to the game on Steam despite the fact the finished game may or may not appear in the Steam store.

If you want truly useless articles, perfectly complementing useless web design, the go-to place is kotaku. Don’t settle for amateurs like RPS. These RPS articles almost always have something marginally informative or useful in them. Even the navel gazing around here is thoughtful.

“RPS is about PC gaming – all of PC gaming, rather than just one of the weird and wonderful niches most other PC-centric sites confine themselves to. It’s written by four of Britain’s top games journalists, and it aims to cover everything from the latest breaking stories about the biggest releases to esoterica from the format’s obscurest peninsulas.”

Amanda – you clearly hate this site, as you have expressed so very many times. You behave like a stupid spoilt brat and add absolutely no value to anyone’s experience. Can I suggest you go away and never read RPS again? That would be lovely.

Really how is this not a good piece? It tells new related to PC gaming that some may find useful, I am one of those people. If John had not wrote this then I wouldn’t be about to go buy the game, as before I was slightly more reluctant due to the developers constant misfortune making me have doubts about their potential to finish the project.

If you see Amanda commenting, take it with a grain of nothing. Because what she says isn’t even worth a grain of salt.

I remember a few months back she posted a comment about something to do with WoW and the Chinese, it went like this: “All you people talking about this need to stop. You’re not Chinese. You don’t know maaaaaaaaaan. You just don’t.”

Because it’s fun playing Devil’s advocate, let me defend Amanda for a moment. While she has made cantankerous and questionable remarks, she has refrained from “LOL” type and no-value-added comments for a good while now.

Nice to see that the devs have some support from “big players”, but I won’t be buying this game via Steam, even if possible. If I can register it to Steam (but not as a mandatory thing), neat. I’ll have to follow this project a bit closer to see whether I should get it.

How do you see him coming? Or is this one of those things where meta-game clarivoyance has to play a part?

This one time after making a pot of soup and trying to heat it in the oven (I don’t know if this works yet), I left the oven on as I took the pot upstairs and Mr Shotgun didn’t show up but the house caught fire and the burglar alarm went off which attracted a horde so I couldn’t even escape and leave the wife to die in the fire*. I would have at least had some satisfaction if Mr Shotgun shared our fate. Is he just a semi-random encounter then?